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These Plastic Bubble Pods May Be the Future of Restaurant Dining Amid Coronavirus

A romantic dinner for two could soon include sitting inside your own plastic lampshade.

As restaurants wrestle with reopening amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, a designer has invented a new see-through contraption that allows for safe, mask-free dining.

Christophe Gernigon is the man behind the Plex’Eat, a plexiglass cone that hangs from above the table and keeps your face protected behind a clear shield. The back also features a cutout which lets you stand and get into your seat without having to bend down.

His invention came out about while he was self-isolating at home in Paris.

“In his creative nocturnal meanderings during these months of confinement and already as a proponent of the avant-garde, he imagined an unusual way of welcoming clients anxious to go to bars and restaurants,” read a description on his official website. “Though we would have preferred not to arrive at this point, it is now better to imagine alternative, designed, elegant and aesthetic solutions that will guarantee social distancing regulations.”

Gernignon is set to start production on the plastic pods next week and disclosed that restaurants in France, Belgium, Canada, Japan and Argentina have expressed interest in trying out the eclectic pieces.

He did not disclose how much each Plex’Eat costs.

Meanwhile, an eatery in Virginia is implementing an ingenious, yet creepy, way to enforce social distancing protocols.

The Inn at Little Washington plans to seat properly dressed life-size mannequins at empty tables throughout their dining room.

Over in Ocean City, Maryland, the bar Fish Tales is launching new “social distancing tables” — round tables on wheels in the shape of tubes that customers wear around their waists and roll around.